The question was typical. The follow-up question was definitely NOT.
Q: Hey I'm wondering how many earthquakes occur every week ?
And how powerful they are......
--Rossy K
A: The answer to your
question depends on how BIG the earthquakes are that you are talking about. The
smaller the earthquake, the more common they are. This means that there are
probably many undetected (very small) earthquakes happening around the world
every second. This also means that the really big ones - the ones that get in
the news - are not very common at all.
The US Geological
Survey estimates that several million detectable earthquakes occur in the world
each year. Many go undetected because they originate in remote areas or they
have very small magnitudes. The National Earthquake Information Center now
locates about 50 earthquakes each day, or about 20,000 a year, worldwide. They
have to be above a certain minimum threshold before an effort is made to even
try to locate them.
There are far
fewer large events than small earthquakes, and this table will show you how
these are parsed out according to magnitude:
Frequency of Occurrence of Earthquakes
Magnitude Average Annually
8 and higher 1
7 - 7.9 15
6 - 6.9 134
5 - 5.9 1319
4 - 4.9 13,000 (estimated)
3 - 3.9 130,000
(estimated)
2 - 2.9 1,300,000
(estimated)
I would recommend
that you visit this web-page:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php
There are lots of
interesting statistics here.
*************
Q: What’s the meaning of life?
--Rossy K
A: Ask your parents, and they will give you a start on
answering that question. I just answer questions about geology.
On average you have upwards of 70 more years to figure this
out yourself. That's pretty much the whole point of your being on this planet.
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